sortiwa
“The role of a manager is like that of parents,” began Lyon assistant coach-cum-child minder Jorge Maciel. “You educate your child for the moments when they aren’t with you, not those when they are.” Left at the school gates, Paulo Fonseca hugged his players as they entered the Allianz Riviera, not to see them until after the school day. Having completed the school run, the Lyon manager returned to the bus, put on his glasses, turned on his iPad and waited.
The Portuguese manager will be spending a lot of time away from his players this year. In the dying seconds of Lyon’s narrow 2-1 win over Brest last weekend, he violently confronted referee Benoît Millot after being shown a red card. The referee says Fonseca displayed an “intimidating attitude”, “spiralled out of control” and tried to “head-butt” him.
Fonseca denies their heads touched but, either way, he was handed a nine-month ban – which his club have called “extremely severe” and “unprecedented”. Jürgen Klopp has some sympathy with Fonseca. “I saw that Fonseca got a nine-month ban. There are similar pictures of me and referees out there, so I am really happy that I don’t get into these situations anymore,” joked the former Liverpool manager.
Lyon are exploring avenues to appeal. The club believe their manager is a victim of the current “toxic context” surrounding refereeing in France, a reference most notably to Marseille president Pablo Longoria’s “corruption” allegations a week earlier, which warranted a 15-game ban.
Not only will Fonseca be banned from the touchline until the end of November, but he won’t even be allowed into the dressing room or to have any contact with his players or touchline staff prior to, during, or immediately after the game, until September. Hence the surreal scenes of a lost-looking Fonseca bidding his players farewell as they sought to do what no other Ligue 1 side had done this season – beat Nice on their own ground.
But once he did saunter up to the press box, he found himself in pleasant company. His counterpart, Franck Haise, also serving his own three-game touchline ban, was also up in the gods in the Allianz Riviera. The pre-match handshake, or elongated and warm embrace as it was, took place in the press box, rather than on the touchline.
“We said hello, nothing much more, just banal things. We were happy to see each other because it had been a while. It will be long for him because it is long when you’re up there. You see the match well, but you’re detached from the passion,” said Haise post-match, who unlike his counterpart, was permitted to undertake his media duties on the night.
With managers in the stands, the Nice ultras displaced from their usual stand – the result of an offensive banner unfurled during the win over Marseille in January – and torrential conditions on the Côte d’Azur, there was an unease in what felt like a near-reality, a sort of lucid dream in which the conditions of a real football match in Nice were being mimicked but not sufficiently to trick us into believing it was real. But the Inception totem did stop spinning and there was an acceptance that, within this unfamiliar context, there was a match to be played.
With proxies on the sidelines, Lilian Nalis for Nice and Maciel for Lyon, the home team seized the upper hand in the first half, without making their dominance tell. Gaëtan Laborde’s close-range header was deflected on to the post by former Nottingham Forest defender Moussa Niakhaté, and Lyon goalkeeper Lucas Perri was equal to efforts from Mohamed-Ali Cho and Evann Guessand.
Lyon looked powerless, just like their manager. As the half-time whistle blew, Fonseca looked forlorn. With his video analysts deserting him and returning to the dressing room, he cut an isolated figure with the dawning realisation of his new reality scrawled over his face.
But a different Lyon side emerged for the second half. Maciel is not a “look at me” type, and he shied away from the idea that he had turned things around at the interval, but his changes swayed this match. Rayan Cherki needed less than a minute on the pitch to make his mark, sliding the ball past Marcin Bulka to give Lyon the lead. Another substitute, Ernest Nuamah, scored the second with a sumptuous curled effort from 25 yards out to secure the 2-0 win.
“It is very easy to be a manager and coach well when you have good players with a good mindset. Managers, without their players, are nothing. I want us to focus on that,” said Maciel, filling in for Fonseca in the post-match press conference. Bringing on Cherki, who tops the assists charts in Ligue 1, was a logical choice, but it was his choice and it altered the course of the match.
Maciel says he will be “a bit like an interim” in the next nine months. It could be an opportunity that propels his own career; Mikel Arteta, José Mourinho, Zinedine Zidane, and even Fonseca’s predecessor at Lyon, Pierre Sage, have all carved out managerial careers having started out as assistants.
With three points in the bag and one of the most in-form sides in France defeated, Lyon’s players were reunited with Fonseca just before midnight. He was exactly where he had left them hours prior. Open-armed in front of the team bus, he embraced them one by one as they set off on the long ride back home.
Quick Guide
Ligue 1 results
Show
Brest 2-0 Angers
Le Havre 1-1 Saint-Étienne
Nantes 0-1 Strasbourg
Reims 0-2 Auxerre
Nice 0-2 Lyon
Rennes 1-4 PSG
Lille 1-0 Montpellier
Marseille 0-1 Lens
Toulouse 1-1 Monaco
Talking points
Nice’s first home defeat in the league this season meant they missed the chance to leapfrog Marseille and move into second. Marseille’s campaign, despite their standing in the table, has been plagued by inconsistency and they suffered their second defeat in three matches, losing 1-0 at home to Lens, who visited the Vélodrome off the back of four consecutive defeats. Roberto De Zerbi’s decision to bench his team’s two top scorers this season, Mason Greenwood and Luis Henrique, backfired. “They didn’t start because they weren’t at 100% physically and I saw that this week,” explained the former Brighton manager after Neil El-Aynaoui’s injury-time goal ensured a much-welcome smash-and-grab win for Will Still’s side, which lifts the gloom that has lingered over the club in recent weeks.
With two of the top three losing this weekend, and fourth-place Monaco drawing at Toulouse, outsiders in the race for the Champions League places closed the gap. Lens, given their January firesale, have distanced themselves from the race, but they remain in contention, as do Strasbourg who beat Nantes 1-0. Brest also returned to winning ways, with a 2-0 victory against Angers. A return to the Champions League may be beyond Éric Roy’s side but the hope of some form of European football is certainly alive.
Thwarted by Alisson in midweek, PSG banked four goals in consecutive Ligue 1 matches as they beat Rennes 4-1 – a scoreline that flatters the runaway Ligue 1 leaders. Luis Enrique will be ruing his side’s inefficiency against Liverpool but Ousmane Dembélé came off the bench and hit an injury-time brace to continue his fine goalscoring form in 2025; he now has 20 in the calendar year. PSG, who remain bullish about their chances of progressing in the Champions League, will have to be as clinical at Anfield on Tuesday. Arne Slot is wary of Les Parisiens and he is right to be.
This is an article by Get French Football News
Source link